Author's Note:I am currently submitting this while I'm on vacation, using an uncooperative laptop. So I won't be responding to anyone for a few more days. Rest assured, I thank you all for reading, reviewing, and emailing, and I'll be back to communicating properly shortly.

Onwards.

Chapter Three: Footprints

Hiccup felt his first real sense of relief in days when he heard the dragon speak his unofficial title in a thick accent. He had now officially met his first Hyperion that wasn't Arc, and even better, his reputation preceded him… which begged a bunch of questions, actually.

"This may sound like a dumb question, but you are a Hyperion, right?" he asked.

Hiccup expected an eye roll and a smirk. All he got was a nonchalant head waggle. "Not so dumb a question. As most humans have no concept of Hyperion nature, I am impressed zat you even ask such a question."

Toothless eased up on the back arching but still kept protectively close to Hiccup. Toothless was naturally defensive around new dragons, an understandable reaction considering Hiccup's typical first-contact moments with unknown species involved chase sequences and misunderstandings and a wardrobe full of slightly crispy clothing.

"Sorry, I guess I expected more irritation and less congeniality," said Hiccup. "I've been hanging around Arc too long."

The Hyperion Skrill chuckled lightly. "Archibald? Yes, I see. Your attitude is a common side effect. A better question is ze one I ask you: what are you doing in ze Desolation? No human has walked here in centuries."

"Desolation? Is that the name of this desert?"

"Indeed. So named by ze local human tribes, and ze closest one of zose is hundreds of miles to ze northeast."

"So you haven't seen a young women in a black robe, walking around like she's in a daze?"

The Skrill stared at him for a long moment. "Vhat?"

"Uh, nothing. A weird dream I had before you showed up. So to answer your question… uh, well, I actually can't answer it."

The Skrill cocked his head. "Zat does not help."

"Seriously, I don't know. A friend of mine, who's gone missing, zapped me with some kind of mystical device and we ended up here."

The Skrill appeared less confused and more thoughtful. "Zis device, it uses a great deal of power?"

"Probably. Why?"

"Zat is vhy I'm here. I felt a great flow of energy erupt from ze sands of ze Desolation, like ze coming of a dozen thunderstorms. It led me to zis place, to ze mating grounds of zat pair zat you intruded upon."

Hiccup got it now. While the dragons of Berk were very communal and flexible in terms of sharing land and resources, there were still territorial dragons that acted like angry old men with "GET OFF MY LAWN" signs posted everywhere. Only dragons were less likely to yell obscenities at you and more likely to bite off your head if you crossed into their territory.

"Zey are gone for now," continued the Skrill. "Zough zeir patience is only good for a day. I suggest you not be here tomorrow at sunset."

"Can all Skrill sense… what, energy?"

"All Skrill can sense lightning. Ve use ze storms to travel afar. But becoming a Hyperion enhances a dragon's natural abilities. I can sense all forms of energy, some natural, some not so natural. I had almost pinpointed ze location of ze energy disruption I felt two days ago, but ze feeling is fading quickly. You wouldn't happen to be of assistance in zis matter?"

Hiccup shrugged. "All I want to do is get out of here and find my friends and…" A shadow settled on his face as his thoughts started getting darker, the distraction of the present giving way to the omnipresent siege of loss surrounding his heart. He forced it off his face with a grimace. "I have bigger things to worry about, okay?"

The Skrill must have caught the change in his disposition. His scaly face softened in empathy. "Somezing bad occurred, did it not? Somezing involving ze Repository?"

Hiccup was well on his way to liking this Hyperion. But the sudden name drop of their secret mission made him immediately suspicious. "How do you know that?"

"A fellow Hyperion by ze name of Adonis, Dragon Rider. He had a tense discussion with Archibald, and afterwards he felt zat a secret of such dire importance had to be safeguarded. He called to me and I came. My species can travel ze vorld in mere days upon riding the lightning. He told me to varn ze ozer Hyperions of a grave danger zat may soon arise, and I was conducting my mission vhen I felt ze disruption. A certain degree of serendipity is in play here, vouldn't you say?"

Hiccup relaxed again. Arc had told him about Adonis, or Adon as Arc called him. He sighed bitterly, knowing he needed to tell the Skrill what had transpired and absolutely not wanting to do it.

"Yeah, something bad occurred," he said. "Something really bad."

But before Hiccup could start his tale, the Skrill held up a wing in the dragon equivalent of a hold-your-tongue gesture. "Zis sounds long, and if you've been here for two days zen I doubt you have eaten, as zere are reasons why zis place is called Ze Desolation."

The Skrill brought around his spiky tail for Hiccup to see, presenting it like he was offering a gift. The gesture was lost on Hiccup until he noticed the odd pieces of debris stuck on the tail's upper spikes, as if the dragon thought his lack of self-grooming was something to show off. Except it wasn't debris stuck to his tail spikes, but pieces of dried meat not altogether different from jerky. The brown slices hadn't dried entirely, still fresh enough to dangle on the dragon's spines without crackling, and the meaty aroma suggested they hadn't gone off yet. Exactly what animal the meat had come from remained to be seen, but Hiccup's stomach didn't really care. If it wasn't a regurgitated fish, he was good.

Toothless eyed the strips with quivering hunger. He was even less picky than Hiccup.

"Try one," said the Skrill. "I suggest ze ones toward the tip of my tail. I added seasoning to zose ones."

Hiccup pulled off a strip and took a bite. He was surprised at how un-revolting it was. For jerky made by a dragon, it was quite pleasant. Was that pepper he tasted?

As he gobbled up his strip, he plucked another one off the Skrill's tail and tossed it to Toothless, who wolfed it down in one gulp. He gave Toothless two more while he chomped down on a second strip. Gods, he hadn't realized how hungry he was until now.

"Is this a Skrill thing," asked Hiccup between bites, "or a Hyperion thing?"

"Neither. It's a Lozar zing… Lozar being me, of course."

"Lozar?"

"No, Lo-zar."

"I think that's what I said."

"No, zar as how you pronounce zimble and zread."

"Zimble and… oh, thimble, I get it. Lo-thar."

"Correct. Lozar."

It was a good thing Hiccup was too busy relishing the comforting feel of the pit in his stomach filling up on dragon-made jerky or he might have thought this conversation exceedingly confusing. Then he remembered his manners and gestured to himself and his dragon.

"Hiccup and Toothless, respectively," he said. "But you didn't really answer my question."

"I am a messenger of the Hyperion," stated Lothar, as if such a thing was a great honor. "I cannot afford to stop and catch my dinner all ze time. I invented a vay to eat on ze go."

Two years of dragon riding and Hiccup had never even considered the idea of transporting ready-made meals on the dragons themselves. He could add one more idea to his creative to-do list when he got home…

Just like that, the brief warm feeling generated by his stomach got swept away by one quick remembrance. Home… could he even bear to go home now after losing Astrid?

Hiccup felt his legs go rubbery on him and he had to sit down before they gave out. He actually hadn't considered Berk in his grief. Astrid's parents, all his friends… what could he possibly tell them? That she died in battle and that made it okay? That he had been inches from her and he still couldn't save her…

He buried his face in his hands and desperately tried quelling the renewed grief swelling in him. This was not the place for this, breaking down in front of a Hyperion Skrill in the middle of nowhere. But he couldn't help it. The pain was too raw, too fierce.

Toothless looked at him with renewed concern while Lothar pivoted to face him, giving Hiccup a surprisingly sympathetic expression despite his awkward reptilian face not having much emoting power.

"Talking of it may help," said Lothar.

"It wouldn't change anything," Hiccup sadly replied.

"Zis is true, but a fresh perspective can do vonders. In addition, perhaps it vill help us understand how you got here."

"What would that do for me and Toothless?"

"Perhaps nothing, perhaps everyzing. Ve von't know unless you share."

Most dragons had little in the way of a talk-to-me face, and the Skrill's face was even less approachable than most. But Lothar's kind demeanor did much to counter Hiccup's misgivings. Clearly, not all Hyperions followed Arc's approach to socializing. Hiccup also realized that he needed someone to speak to that could speak back, to confirm that the battle in the Repository wasn't a bad dream.

So he started from the day he saw Riki Poka for the first time, and he went from there.

Darkness came early that night, and it was less comforting than before now that Hiccup knew there were testy Skrills in the area. But with Lothar around, he was less anxious to leave than before. Likewise, it felt slightly cathartic to tell his tale to someone who hadn't lived it with him, making the hours gently flow by like soft music from a flute. Toothless had to superheat a few rocks to use for light, as there was nothing flammable to burn other than Hiccup and his attire.

Lothar asked a lot of intelligent questions, about the Alchemist, about the Repository, about the half-metal Night Fury named Dark Star (though Hiccup sometimes reverted to calling her Metal Fury out of habit). He wondered what had caused the crew of the Alchemist's ship to fire on the tower, he asked for a detailed description of Hiccup's experience with the eerie lights that had enveloped him before arriving in the Desolation, and he seemed particularly keen on knowing the physical characteristics of the object Nestor had been holding right before the Repository faded away. Hiccup told him what he knew, which wasn't much. He'd largely stopped paying attention to the world at that point.

But for all of Lothar's probing questions about how Hiccup came to the Desolation, he did listen attentively when Hiccup recited the last moments he spent with Astrid, watching her abandon his futile attempt at saving her by letting go and dropping into the steam cloud below, disappearing from his sight and his life in the blink of an eye. The Skrill nodded his head solemnly, then waited quietly for Hiccup to collect himself when the tears started running down Hiccup's cheek once more.

"It's never gets easier, I fear," said Lothar softly after a time. "Even after seven centuries I find zere is no strategy nor tactic, no piece of sage advice nor comforting word zat makes loss any less painful. It is ze price paid for opening your heart. It is vhy so many Hyperions spend zeir days alone. Despite what zey say, sometimes it is better to be alone zan to pay the price over and over and over."

"So… stick to being alone in life?" Hiccup wiped his checks and stared hard at Lothar. "That's your advice?"

"It vas not offered as advice," said Lothar, glaring back at him. "It is merely vat ve do. You are young – you may understand in time. But for now, I tell you zis – it will hurt for now, perhaps for a long time, but it vill get better."

Hiccup nodded politely, utterly unconvinced. This conversation wasn't helping him at all. He felt like he was in a vast hole, surrounded by sheer sides and with no ladder or rope to grab onto, and the one guy who might be able to pull him out of it at the moment was looking down from on high and telling him that he'd get himself out eventually.

Lothar pushed himself up from his resting spot right before the cave and stretched out his spiky wings. "Forgive me my inadequacy in zese matters. I have not dealt vith death in many decades. Also, your story only feeds my need to discover your arrival point, vhere I may find more answers to my questions."

"But you were going to help us leave here."

"And I vill, but not tonight. Do you understand ze nature of your journey, young Dragon Rider? Teleportation, no matter how it is done, requires huge amounts of power. If an artifact exists here zat contains such power, it cannot be left unattended. Far too dangerous. I must investigate furzer."

"You could follow Toothless's tracks," offered Hiccup. "He had to walk us here because his tail was out of order."

"No good," said Lothar, shaking his head. "With ze vinds of ze Desolation as zey are, tracks here blow away vizin hours. I vill search for now and hope to be fortunate. On my vord, I vill return before midday tomorrow to escort you out of zis land. I advise zat you stay here until zen."

Hiccup and Toothless exchanged skeptical glances. The Desolation had well and truly earned its place in Hiccup's mind as the least desirable place to live on the planet after only two days (and having lived on Berk all his life, that was saying something) and spending another night in the desert was as attractive a prospect as getting stuck with keeping the village outhouses unfrozen all winter. Plus the minor detail about a pair of irked Skrills who wanted their watering hole vacated.

But they needed a guide, or the Desolation would be the death of them. Hiccup also had to concede that Lothar had a point. He'd seen the kind of damage Artisan artifacts could cause if misused, and they couldn't leave a potentially deadly artifact out in the open… even if the only thing endangered was a lot of sand.

"I guess we'll stay here and wait," admitted Hiccup. "But we're not hanging around another night."

"You von't have to. On my honor, I vill take you from zis place before ze next day is over."

Lothar offered his "jerky tail" once more, allowing Hiccup and Toothless to take as much as they needed to quell their hunger until tomorrow. It didn't leave much for Lothar, but he reassured Hiccup that he could find decent hunting grounds fairly quickly and that jerky no longer had the same appeal it once did over the centuries. It was easy to share.

The Skrill opened up his wings and made to leave, but hesitated suddenly, as if remembering something vital. He swung around to Hiccup. "Zere is one zing more. Zis land is said to be one of spirits and curses, where ze dead lie uneasy and unhappily. While I cannot attest to the validity of superstitions, I vould advise you to not be curious out here. Zis land is very unforgiving, and you are a stranger to it."

"Don't worry," said Hiccup. "I know a thing or two about wastelands. We'll play it smart."

He tried his best to act nonchalant as Lothar took to the air and glided out into the night-shrouded desert, disappearing beyond the sheltering rocks with little fanfare. But he was far from nonchalant – he was quite "chalant," if there was such a thing. For a change, it had less to do with his grief or his surroundings and everything to do with Lothar's parting words. Something about ghosts and the dead and the kind of thing that you really didn't want to hear right before nighttime fell in earnest.

Hiccup's imagination had always been his strongest and weakest character trait, a boon when it came to inventing devices and thinking outside the box and a flaw when it came to believing in otherworldly phenomena. He'd had his troll hunts of his early childhood (and he never did find any… well, until he heard of the Alchemist's henchman, the half-troll named Norom), he'd had a period when he was convinced that one of Berk's legendary Vikings, Rudolf the Annoying, was haunting his wardrobe, and he preferred to steer clear of any cemeteries or tombs after midnight. While time and experience had tempered his belief in the supernatural, the last few months hadn't helped matters, especially Cervantes and his power over the bones of the dead.

In his distraught frame of mind, it wasn't hard to think of the Desolation as a land of misfortune, where only the dead roamed freely. And then there was the girl in the flowing robe in his dream, walking by the cave as if she was being drawn somewhere…

Hiccup hoped it was just his picked-upon mind doing nonsensical dream stuff, but considering he'd never seen the girl before and his dreams were always about people, places, and things he'd seen in his life, it was hard not to feel uneasy. Hopefully nothing would come along to validate his fear, like seeing footprints in the sand right outside his cave.

Hopefully.

In the morning, there were footprints right outside his cave.

Hiccup stood next to them and stared at them passively, feeling very much like the world was singling him out for every sort of random insanity as of late. Even in the middle of nowhere, he still managed to happen upon dark tidings.

Toothless remained asleep in the cave, sleeping more deeply than he had in days. Sheer exhaustion had finally gotten to Toothless – you could only be on guard for so long before your body demanded rest, and it must have caught up with him. It also meant that whoever, or whatever, made the footprints had snuck by Toothless in the night. Toothless could hear a rat tiptoe with his keen ears.

Then again, ghosts didn't have to make noise, did they? Even ghosts who left boot prints in the sand, walking perpendicular to the cave and leading off into the desert. The indentations were unmistakable, and the boot prints were smaller than Hiccup's feet, which meant someone of a smaller stature than Hiccup had done this.

The night had gone by uneventfully otherwise, Hiccup and Toothless hanging it up early so they could get ready to leave in the morning should Lothar conclude his business early. Despite his anxiety over ghostly visitation and the myriad other issues on his mind, Hiccup found that sleep came easy once he gave into it. Perhaps knowing that he had one more ally out here made his life feel less out of control and miserable… though not by much.

There had been the dream again, though. An identical dream, as far as he could remember. The same surreal feel to the world, the same dark-skinned girl in the robe, walking the same direction past his cave on some kind of sojourn into the wastelands, a vacant expression etched on her face that suggested a trance or a utter disregard for her fate in the wastes.

But something changed at the last instance before he woke. Just as she began to pass the lip of the cave, her smooth face turned to him, her green eyes fixing onto his. Her expression didn't change, but there was power in those eyes, a pull that beckoned to him, telling him that he needed to follow her path, for her sake… for his sake…

He had awoken feeling more out of sorts than the previous night, driven from his dream by his own misgivings. Toothless had barely moved during the night, Hiccup using him as a warm scaly bed once again. Needing to heed the call of nature, Hiccup had stepped outside and right into the path of the phantom boot prints that he absolutely knew hadn't been there the day before.

Forgetting all about nature's call for the moment, Hiccup could only stop and stare and wonder what to make of it. The dream hadn't made the footprints. Dreams didn't make footprints. So either he hadn't been dreaming, or the footprints weren't real.

But upon reaching down with his hand and feeling the contours of the closest print, the parted sand and the impression stamped in the gritty earth, there was no denying the reality. The prints were as real as he was.

A snort from behind him revealed that Toothless had come awake. The dragon padded out to him for a morning greeting, then immediately spied the footprints and became wary, like he'd just spotted a poisonous snake. He crept in close to one of them, sniffed it, and came away baffled. He sniffed it again and then looked at Hiccup as if he couldn't believe what he smelled.

"Your guess is as good as mine, bud," said Hiccup. "Did you get a scent?" Toothless's headshake meant a negative. He didn't expect him to, not if a spirit made the prints. Of course, what he knew about spirits and whether or not they had a smell could fit in a bumblebee's eye, but he just couldn't see ghosts having a reek to them.

"Okay, we can do this one of two ways," said Hiccup. "We can be the smart guys who stay put and wait for Lothar to show up so we can get out of here and we'll just chalk this up to, I don't know, sand elves playing tricks on us. Or… or someone is trying to tell me something and I can't just ignore this."

Toothless gave him a neutral look. Hiccup didn't actually expect Toothless to give him advice on how to deal with spirits and their chaotic ways, but it might have been nice to get an emphatic "don't follow the trail" message from the dragon. Instead, Toothless was doing what he usually did – trusting Hiccup's judgment on matters he didn't comprehend.

Would the spirit follow them if they left, or was this a regional haunting? If he assumed the girl was the actual spirit, it was possible that she was asking for his help. He'd read his share of stories about Viking ghost ships and their lost crews trying to find their way home before they could go to Valhalla, or vengeful spirits that needed justice done to the one that wronged them. Spirits seemed to require catharsis or absolution before moving on. Maybe this one was asking for the same thing, and as he was the only human to enter the Desolation in centuries, she was asking Hiccup for help.

Or maybe she wanted to suck out his soul with a straw.

"Staying put is the smart choice, bud," said Hiccup to Toothless, "but I can't stay put. I feel so… helpless, Toothless. Astrid, Nestor… I can't do anything for them. I can't even get us out of this place without help. But maybe… maybe I can do something good here. I think we need to follow this trail."

Hiccup thought he saw Toothless give him a doubting look, but the dragon's face hadn't changed at all. The doubt was coming from Hiccup. "It can't go very far out there, and even if it does we'll only go out twenty minutes and then come back. We have plenty of time before midday. The sun's barely up as it is. Lothar wouldn't leave without us."

Toothless wasn't arguing. Hiccup knew he was actually arguing with himself about how bad an idea this was, but after everything that had happened, he was desperate to turn things around. Bad idea or not, he already knew he was committed. It was either this or back to sitting around waiting for Lothar… and thinking about Astrid.

Twenty minutes flight time. They could cover a lot of ground that way. Long enough to know if this was a flight of fancy worth pursuing.

Long enough to get into more trouble, too, he thought grimly.

They had to keep the speed down and the altitude low to stay on the trail. Even though the footprints stood out on the featureless sand like honey on flatbread, the prints weren't big and the rolling dunes hid the trail as the footprints crossed up and down them. Hiccup had taken note of as many landmarks as he could to ensure that they wouldn't get lost on the way back, since he couldn't trust the footprints to be around when he needed them. Lothar's words about how quickly the gusty winds of the Desolation erased everything had stayed with him, and thankfully Hiccup's navigational skills were up to snuff in the daylight.

Those same gusty winds were making things harder all around. Toothless had to make numerous corrections in air, as he was assailed by one powerful blast of wind after another, driving him off course each time. Clouds of brown and rust made up for the lack of any white in the sky, and they were forced to fly through several of the caustic clouds to keep on the trail. The sand whipped at them with frenzied intensity, forcing them to fly higher once Toothless complained for the fifth time about the quantity of sand he was being forced to breathe in. Hiccup had to screen his eyes with his hands to see at times, and he ate grit every time he shouted a command to Toothless.

The wind countered the heat of the emerging sun well enough, but without cover they would soon begin to bake like hog meat on a spit. Hiccup planned on being back in the cave long before that occurred.

The footprint trail was holding up remarkably well considering the strong winds blowing. The prints had to been hours old already, but they were just as visible as before, as if permanently frozen into the sand. This did not reassure Hiccup – when something simple like footprints defied the laws of physics, you knew you were in for a wild time.

It took only ten minutes for Hiccup to call this a bad stupid-crazy idea and decide to turn around while they still had a trail to follow. He might have done so had he not spied the first real non-sand landmark since leaving the cave, something out in the distance that resembled another set of towering stones, almost like a mountain had gotten buried in the desert over the eons and only the peak remained uncovered. The craggy stones were bigger and more foreboding than the ones they had left behind, and just looking at them made Hiccup feel nervous for some reason, but they were all that was out here for miles and miles, and there was the inescapable fact the trail was heading right for them. Made sense, as a wandering traveler would seek out shelter wherever possible.

Hiccup's uneasiness grew as he reconsidered his logic. This wasn't a wandering traveler in the conventional sense. Hiccup had a feeling ghosts didn't have issues with heat and sand. But if he was wrong and it wasn't a ghost after all, but someone in need of assistance, it remained the most likely place to hole up. As much as the idea of getting closer to those rocks made him uncomfortable, he had to be sure he wasn't turning his back on anyone in need before heeding back to the watering hole.

Daring to open his mouth and eat more "sand"-witches, Hiccup told Toothless to head for the rocks and come in for a landing. The dragon, who had itchy sand liberally stuck to every corner of his body, happily complied.

Using the lee side of the rocks as a barrier for the wind, they came in low and slow for a careful recon. The tracks disappeared upon reaching the stones, the track-maker presumably climbing up the low incline and skirting the numerous outcroppings that jetted from the beleaguered mountain. Most of the rocks were gray-brown, marred by countless years of sand scrapping, but there did appear to be a gap between two huge slabs of sedimentary stone that offered a refuge from the elements. In there, the sun could only get at you at midday. If Hiccup was seeking a place to survive in the Desolation, that would be it.

It was too narrow a gap for Toothless to fly into safely, so they landed a few feet from the edge of the gap. The spot was blessedly free of the scathing wind, at least until Toothless decided to furiously shake the accumulated sand from his body. Hiccup got pelted by a good chunk of the sand shower, but he didn't have the heart to berate Toothless over it. The poor dragon was having a worse time than he was, at least in terms of dealing with the dry environment.

Hiccup bit his lip as he stared down the gap, examining the place for hiding spots and potential dangers. Based on appearances, the gap didn't engender that jittery feeling you sometimes got with other nasty places. No steam erupting from natural vents in the stone. No lava – that was always a plus. Nothing crawled around looking for human-sized dinner options. The one aspect that bothered him was that the other side of the gap was a dead end, a forty-foot cliff that would be impassable for travelers on foot. Hiccup didn't have that problem, thankfully.

Yet he continued feeling that creepy vibe from earlier. It was like his dream with the robed girl, where the world just seemed a bit different, a bit off. The gap felt like that to a degree, like it didn't follow the same rules as the rest of the world. He had hoped that maybe he'd been pursuing a very sneaky traveler off the beaten path. Now his thoughts were heading back to spirit territory.

Well, he didn't come out here just to turn tail when things got a little creepy. Ghost or not, he needed to get this sorted out. Worse case scenario, he'd hop back on Toothless and they'd zoom away before they could get cursed or hexed or whatever else a ghost might be capable of doing.

He checked both Toothless's rudder and his own false leg for any sand issues and did some basic cleaning on both. No damage that he could find, thank Odin.

"Follow behind me," ordered Hiccup. "First sign of trouble, we're out of here. And let's keep the fireballs to a minimum. In this tight space, they're likely to blow back in our faces." Toothless nodded and crept behind Hiccup as the two of them stepped into the gap.

The creepy vibe didn't fade as Hiccup walked along the narrow gap, navigating the path with far more ease than his bulky companion, who had to climb over most of the obstacles that Hiccup could shimmy around. Hiccup noticed that the light got a litter redder as they passed into the gap's shadow, the air feeling heavier, almost stale. It felt more and more like a place that the world had left behind, where the rocks never aged a second, the wind never found purchase, and one could stay here and remain exactly the same for a thousand years. It was the weirdest feeling Hiccup had ever known.

As strange as the surroundings felt, Toothless showed no signs of timidity or fear as he walked behind Hiccup. That baffled Hiccup further. His dragon pal's senses were more acute than his, and many times Toothless had warned him of danger long before it arrived. But Toothless was nice and calm here. Either the creep-vibe wasn't something a dragon could pick up on, or the whole thing was in Hiccup's head. Considering his emotional state, Hiccup was leaning toward the latter possibility.

They came to a slight curve in the gap that forced Toothless to do some tight squeezing, so Hiccup opted to advance a few steps more and see what was around the curve. Outside of the creepy buzz, he hadn't seen a single piece of human inhabitance, or any other type of inhabitance, and he was starting to feel stupid for thinking there was anything out here in the Desolation to get worked up about…

Around the curve, Hiccup's metal foot touched down on a sudden incline and slipped out from under him. He yelped and went down on his fanny, too shocked by what he was seeing to register the pain in his rear.

The wall of rock past the curve yielded to a sizeable cave opening, at least sixty feet across from side to side and with a good forty feet height. It took up the entire side of the stone slab. The interior walls were solid rock, smoothed out as if a river had once rushed through it for centuries. The angle of the curve had hidden the cave from sight, the floor sloping down to give any clumsy explorers who ventured within a quick slide into its gaping maw, suggesting that it was the start of a cave system that went under the teeming sands. Most of the cave was consumed by gripping darkness, with only the first twenty feet lit up by sunlight reflecting off the outside stone. And the smell… old, like a forgotten cellar that used to store a bunch of foodstuffs and alcohol and now everything inside was moldy and rotted and ruined.

If that had been all, Hiccup might have called it a day and gotten back on Toothless. Exploring strange caves that reeked of fetid odors was way past his acceptable conditions for this stupid-crazy idea of his. But the first twenty feet of the cave held an image that made Hiccup forget about leaving at all.

There was a raised dais within the cave and near the entrance, six feet tall and designed like the old pillars that held up the Great Hall back in Berk, that presented Hiccup his newest surprise. How she had gotten up there confounded Hiccup, considering there was no ladder or stairway anywhere around the dais. She knelt on the dais with her robes flowing around her small body, her head bowed and her hands pressed together as if in deep prayer. She was turned toward him, eyes closed and face serene. She couldn't have missed his noisy entrance, but she offered no sign of acknowledging his existence.

"Uh, Toothless, you should see this," he stammered, finally getting to his feet. Wary of the slippery cavern floor, he stood in place and looked around for any other general weirdness. The girl praying alone on the dais was it, but it was enough. The dream girl was actually real – that filled his weirdness quota for the day.

"Um… hello?" Hiccup waved at her on reflex, even though she couldn't see him do it. "Can you hear me?"

Toothless cleared the tight curve and bounded to him, alarmed by Hiccup's change in demeanor. The dragon looked in the cave's direction and sniffed the air, shifting his ears to get a good read. He didn't seem to be looking at the girl in the cave, and he proceed to look around as if searching for the actual interesting thing Hiccup had mentioned, as if the girl wasn't interesting enough. Maybe he didn't consider her a threat, and was more worried about what lay within the deeper reaches of the cavern.

"Who are you?" he called out to the girl. "Did you walk by my cave last night? I followed a bunch of footprints out here, and I have to assume…"

He was getting nothing from her, not even a facial twitch in his direction. She looked alive; he could see her breathe at regular intervals, but no sign of awareness otherwise. Was she asleep up there? Regardless, he was going to get some answers from her for his troubles and if that meant disturbing her meditation, so be it.

"Toothless, I need a boost up there." It should've been an obvious request, yet Toothless now looked at him like he had just asked to be buried in the sand headfirst. Hiccup repeated his request and pointed at the dais. Toothless looked where he was pointing but still gave him a confused look. Not in the category of bad idea, but in the realm of I don't know what you're talking about.

Hiccup didn't get it. The Night Fury's eyes were better than his. How could he not see her?

That's when it hit him. Maybe Toothless couldn't see the girl because she wasn't really there. Maybe this was the spirit before him, appearing only to the eyes of a fellow human. Or maybe he was finally cracking up something fierce.

Blinded by his doubts on his own sanity, it took Hiccup a second to realize that the girl was now looking at him, her green eyes peering out from below her black hood, a slight smile on her lips. She was aware of him now, that was for certain.

Suddenly, he felt a wave of wooziness pass through him, like every muscle in his body wanted to shut down all at once. It was like he was about to faint, only without the severe lightheadedness that went with it. He wobbled slightly, Toothless catching him before he went down entirely, Hiccup leaning on the dragon much like he had in the first days of his new foot, when he had to learn how to walk all over again.

The wave fled as rapidly as it came, though, and Hiccup felt strength returning to his body immediately. He stood back upright, much more anxious than before. Fainting spells were usually symptomatic of some other problem. Maybe thirst, though he didn't feel thirsty. Still, he felt fine right now.

Hiccup turned to reassure his dragon pal that he was okay when he became aware that Toothless was staring right at the girl on the dais, glaring with clear suspicion. Hiccup double-checked that nothing new had changed around the cave to distract Toothless. Nothing but the girl in the black robe, and his eyes were fixed right on her. Whatever the reason, he could see her now. Maybe she was allowing it to happen, showing herself to Toothless as she had with Hiccup.

"You came after all, Hiccup," said the girl, her voice melodic and measured, as if speaking was an art form to her. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You and me both," said Hiccup. "And you are?"

"My name must wait for later." She stood up on the dais and gestured toward the shadowed regions behind her. "We have little time before it arrives."

Hiccup had been through many adventures in his young life, many mundane, many fantastic. He'd taken on many threats as well, some dragon in nature, many more of a human quality. It was Hiccup's experience that the worst ones, the ones that gave you nightmares every time you dared remember them, were the ones where the threat defied any sensible classification.

They were the ones that were always described as it.